Food products of various types are often provided in large chunks or loaves which are typically sliced into relatively thin slices. For example, "deli" type meat products are usually provided in elongated loaf type form, and slices are cut from the end of the loaf as required. The same is true of many cheeses. While bread loaves can be bought in either cut or uncut form, most bread purchased in grocery stores might be pre-sliced, or the purchaser could have the store or bakery slice the bread if so desired. However, if the bread is not sliced at the store or bakery, or if the bread is home baked, then the user must cut slices in order to use the bread.
While specialized slicers are used in commercial establishments for slicing meat or bread products, these slicers are relatively large, motorized products which are not generally suitable for home use. Many meat slicers include a rotatable, motorized cutting blade with the loaf of meat being held against the cutting blade and moved back and forth across the blade to cut sequentially slices of meat off the end of the loaf. Bread slicers often include a plurality of vertical, reciprocating saw blades spaced apart by the thickness of the desired slices, with the bread loaf being pushed through the saw blades to slice the entire loaf in one action. Again, these slicers are generally too expensive for home use.
In addition, cutting an entire loaf of bread all at once is disadvantageous if the bread is not consumed quickly, particularly for home baked bread lacking preservatives, since the bread tends to dry out rapidly. It would be better to cut off just individual slices as needed and leave the rest of the bread loaf intact.
Obviously, a loaf of bread could be cut simply by holding the loaf of bread in place with one hand and using the other hand to manipulate a knife to cut slices off the end of the loaf. However, this is not ideal for a number of reasons. Gripping the loaf tightly with the hand tends to crush the bread while it is being cut. In addition, it is difficult to cut slices having a consistent thickness, or to adjust easily the thickness of the sliced bread, simply using an unsupported knife. Finally, if the user is not careful, there is a possibility that the user might accidentally cut his or her fingers with the knife blade.
Various devices are known for use with a manual knife to help hold a loaf of bread when slicing the bread. Many of these devices comprise channel shaped boxes in which the loaf of bread is placed, with the side walls of the boxes having a plurality of knife slots spaced along the length thereof so that multiple slices can be cut one after another along the length of the loaf. Often, these slots are spaced at different distances from one another to allow the bread slices to have various thicknesses. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,072,450 to Hamblin, 1,131,333 to Coon and 4,964,323 to Fortney disclose devices of this type.
While these devices are more effective than simply using an unsupported knife to slice the bread, they have various disadvantages. For one thing, the knife slots in each side wall have to be precisely aligned with all the other slots in the other side wall to allow the knife blade to pass across the width of the box to slice the bread. The need for such an alignment, and the use in the first place of multiple slots spaced apart in an array of such slots, makes the construction of such a device relatively labor intensive, and accordingly more complex and expensive. In addition, to adjust the thickness of the bread slices, the end of the bread loaf has to be positioned appropriately adjacent to those knife slots having the right spacing from adjacent slots. This can be difficult and time consuming to do, thus making the device complex to use if slices having different thicknesses are required.